Following up on the announcement that they were unable to pay three club executives and first team player wages just a week ago, Portsmouth Chief Executive Peter Storrie has admitted that the club desperately needs at least 30% of the 50 Million Pound new owner Sulaiman al-Fahim has pledged to the club or things will continue to get ugly quickly.

Via Guardian 

Storrie said Portsmouth will also have to find millions owed to several clubs and agents in unpaid fees for transfers.

Discussing the need for Fahim, who is recovering from an operation for kidney stones he underwent yesterday in Dubai, to find the fresh finance to save Portsmouth, Storrie confessed he is unsure if the 32-year-old will be able to produce the required amount. “I have to be truthful and tell you that I don’t know if the 30% of the £50m refinancing package will arrive with us in mid-October. I would say that you have the date about correct, around 15 October,” he said. “So the bottom line is the middle to end of October. I really don’t know what will happen if that money doesn’t come through. All I can tell you is what I have seen. The documentation is in place but the proof of whether it is all genuine will be if it turns up. Sulaiman says it will, so I have to believe it will. He believes it, so let’s wait and see.”

Storrie also revealed that a £5m loan, borrowed from the Saudi-based Faraj brothers so that Portsmouth could pay the missing wages and day-to-day costs, may have been borrowed against the club. “We have a loan to pay the players’ wages for last month but what has been used as security I cannot tell you because it has been handled by the lawyers between the two parties, while I have just been the guy doing the introduction,” he said. “If we are talking about the club being used as security, then all I can say is that I genuinely don’t know, but it wouldn’t surprise me. I persuaded them to help the club. There are people willing to help this club because it is worth saving.”

Pompey may have further problems with suggestions last night that the Revenue and Customs could issue the club with a statutory demand for unpaid taxes, the first step towards a winding-up order.

Agents, meanwhile, including two high-profile representatives – thought to be Pini Zahavi and Jonathan Barnett – are owed around £3m for deals that brought Sulley Muntari, Peter Crouch and Jermain Defoe to Fratton Park. “It is true that we owe a couple of top agents a great deal of money and, if you say it is £3m, I can confirm it is not far short of that figure. But there are other agents owed their commissions as well,” Storrie said, before claiming that only his relationship with the pair has staved off their demand to be paid what they are owed immediately.

“The two agents you talk about have been incredibly helpful,” he added. “It is through my friendship with them that they are not banging on the door. Rather they have been really understanding. But we have owed money on transfers to a number of clubs, and those clubs have also been extremely helpful. So it all depends on the refinancing and I don’t see it as a deadline necessarily in mid-October but [it] cannot go on any longer than the end of October, to be realistic. I have been asking people to be patient – but they cannot be patient for ever. The Premier League has also been helpful. We’ve been in touch with them and work closely with them. They are keeping an eye on the situation but I am keeping them informed. They are aware of all the facts.”

Portsmouth’s predicament has revived the Faraj brothers’ interest in buying a major shareholding; representatives are due to meet Fahim to explore how big a partner the Saudi Arabian businessmen might become. They were leading members in a consortium, headed by Storrie, that tried to buy the club in the summer.

The players remain unpaid and are understood to have been offered minimal information by the club. They are, though, in dialogue with the Professional Footballers’ Association through their representative, Hermann Hreidarsson.

Image via Pompey